Consumers desire laundry compositions that leave their clothes looking clean and feeling soft. To meet this need, detergent manufacturers have formulated certain laundry detergents with fabric softening actives (FSAs), such as silicones. Unfortunately, in many of these 2-in1 detergents that deliver cleaning and softening in a single product, much of the silicone fails to deposit on the fabric during the wash cycle, and is instead wastefully carried away by the rinse water. Therefore, there is a need to improve the deposition efficiency of silicone delivered by detergents through the wash.
The applicants have found that silicone deposition efficiency can be surprisingly improved using a method of treating fabrics with a wash-added detergent comprising silicone followed by a rinse-added softener composition. Furthermore, particular attention to the combination of surfactants used in the wash-added detergent composition can improve silicone deposition further when combined with a rinse-added composition. Additionally, methods of using certain silicone-containing detergents followed by silicone-containing softener compositions, as described in the present disclosure, provide unexpected and synergistic silicone deposition benefits.